Microsoft's aggressive defense of its intellectual property, which includes claims that Linux violates a number of its patents, is nothing more than 'a marketing thing', according to Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel. "They have been sued for patents by other people, but I don't think they've - not that I've gone through any huge amount of law cases - but I don't think they've generally used patents as a weapon," Torvalds said. "But they're perfectly happy to use anything at all as fear, uncertainty and doubt in the marketplace, and patents is just one thing where they say, 'Hey, isn't this convenient? We can use this as a PR force'."